Ms. Hyerin Song

Ph.D. Candidate

Pusan National University

Hyerin Song received the B.S. degree in the department of nanomedical engineering from Pusan National University, the Republic of Korea in 2014. She received an M.S. degree in the department of cogno-mechatronics engineering at Pusan National University, Republic of Korea and has been continuing studying toward the Ph.D. degree in the same department. She is currently working in the department of electrical & computer engineering at the University of Toronto for 6 months as an exchange student with a scholarship. Her research interest is an investigation in opto-analytical methods integrated with nanoscience, including performance-improved optical sensor and tuning a plasmonic properties with nanostructures. She won the research excellent awards in international society for optics and Photonics in 2015 and 2017. In 2018, she was selected as an excellent graduate student by Optical Society of Korea (OSK), so she attended the '1st International Day of Light (IDL)' commemoration as part of a Korea delegation.

Development of performance-enhanced optical sensors using a plasmonic nanostructures

A nanostructure has its own unique properties based on plasmonic phenomena in their conformational properties including materials, size, shape, and periodicity. An interesting point is that unique properties can be manipulated for specific purposes and have been widely employed for fascinating applications. In my researches, diverse types of nanostructures were exploited to enhance the performances of optical sensor systems. For instance, the inherently weak Raman scattering signal was highly enhanced by two schemes for generating plasmonic coupling effect within few nanometer-gaps between nanostructures; (1) target-attached gold nanoparticles located few nanometer above nanoisland-structured substrate and (2) a SERS-active particle consisted of multiple metallic nanoparticles separated with block copolymer micelles. With both schemes, enormously amplified and distinctive scattering signal was obtained. To enhance sensitivity of surface plasmonic resonance (SPR) sensor, sub-femtomolar level of streptavidin was detected by nematically self-assembled layer with functionalized bacteriophage. The sensitivity of SPR sensor also can be increased by using a multilayer system. Several different refractive indices of nanolayers were designed to be stacked-on based on a numerical analysis to enhance the sensitivity factors defined by sensitivity (nm/RIU), peak depth and FWHM. The designed multilayer structures were applied in wavelength-interrogation SPR sensor, resulting in 1943 nm/RIU sensitivity with 9.37 nm-FWHM and 94.2% of resonance peak depth. Recently, I have been researching on tunable nanogap between nanostructures for fascinating and enhanced performance of optoanalytical methods using dynamics in nanoscale-modulation.